Christian Gottlieb Prieber

Christian Gottlieb Prieber , also: Christian Gottlieb Priber (born March 21, 1697 in Zittau ; † 1744/45 in Fort Frederica on the island of St. Simons , Georgia ), was a German lawyer , social utopian and adventurer .

Life

Education and life in Zittau

Christian Gottlieb Prieber came to Zittau ( Saxony ) on March 21, 1697 as the son of the merchant and cloth merchant in Webergasse in Zittau, Friedrich Prieber (1661–1721) and his first wife Anna Dorothea Bergmann, used. Idleness (1656–1715), on the world. From 1707 to 1717 he was a student at the grammar school in Zittau . During this time he experienced three rectors: Christian Weise until 1708 , Gottfried Hoffmann from 1708 to 1712 and Johann Christoph Wenzel until 1717 . Since 1718 he studied law in Leipzig . He passed his final exam in 1722 at the University of Erfurt . The title of his dissertation, written in Latin, was: Usu doctrinae juris romani de ignoratia juris in foro germaniae et quod in eo aeqvum sit (German: "Application of the doctrine of Roman law of the ignorance of law in German courts and what is just and fair "). He then returned to Zittau as “Juris practicus” and on November 17, 1722 married Christiana Dorothea Hoffmann (1701–1757), the daughter of the rector of the Zittau grammar school Gottfried Hoffmann (1658–1712) and his second wife Christiane Schönfelder (1675–1675–1712). 1753). With her he fathered seven children between 1723 and 1732, four of whom survived. He was probably leading a double life at the time: in public he was a respected lawyer, while in secret, as an unusually radical enlightener, he contemplated a better world. A letter handed down from Prieber to Johann Christoph Gottsched could be an indication of such an intellectual development.

Escape and emigration to South Carolina

In 1735 Prieber disappeared from Zittau, where he left his wife and children behind. The reasons for this are unknown, but it is possible that the authorities discovered him. In London he applied to the "Trustees for Establishing the Colony of Georgia" to settle in the Georgia colony founded in North America in 1733. It could be that Prieber was inspired to this asylum idea by a highly regarded visit to England by Cherokee Indians in Europe in 1730. But Prieber did not settle in Savannah , Georgia , as planned , but reappeared in Charleston , South Carolina in December 1735 . There, too, it only held him for a short time. In 1736 he moved to the North American wilderness. In the British colony he Anglicized his name to Priber.

Life with the Cherokee

The Tennessee area where the Cherokee village of Great Tellico stood

A few years later, traders sighted Priber near the Cherokee in Great Tellico at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains . The trader Ludovick Grant reports of him: “Being a great scholar, he was quick to master their language and his engaging nature won their hearts in flight, he trimmed his hair Indian-style and painted himself like them, usually almost naked walked around, except for his shirt and linen cloth. ”Priber had become a full member of the Cherokee society through adoption and is said to have been accepted into one of the matrilineal clans through marriage to the chief's daughter Clogoittah . Priber had learned the Cherokee language, was working on a linguistic dictionary and writing his observations in a diary . Since these records have been lost, however, it is only considered a “lost precursor” of American ethnology and linguistics . Priber became suspicious of the traders and soon also of the British colonial rulers. The advocate from Saxony made it clear to the Cherokee that they had allowed large parts of their country to be tricked by the English. In future, they should be more skilful in safeguarding their interests. Through education, he strived for an Indian confederation as a long-term goal in order to shake off the yoke of the Europeans. In 1739 Colonel Joseph Fox was supposed to arrest Priber in an expedition, but this failed because the eloquent German knew how to defend himself and was under the protection of the Cherokee. Priber, meanwhile, tackled his idea of ​​a utopian community called the Kingdom of Paradise that would resurrect on even better land on the Alabama River . There complete freedom would be guaranteed, all would be equal and all goods would be common to all. Everyone works for the good of the whole. There are no marriage contracts. Women should choose their husbands as they see fit, but they should also be able to leave at any time; even every day if they felt like it. The upbringing of the children was a matter for the community. Violations would be punished by the opposite, a practice Priber had learned among the Indians, where thieves were praised for their honest principles and cowardly warriors for their bravery - which was worse than torture for their sense of honor. How many followers Priber had is still unclear. This made Priber the No. 1 enemy of the southern colonies. In early 1743, Priber was captured by traders on a diplomatic mission to Louisiana, France , and imprisoned in Fort Frederica on St. Simon's Island, where he died in 1745 without trial.

The manuscripts of his works, including the book ready for print with the principles of his political utopia "Paradise" or "Kingdom of Paradise", his diary, the dictionary of the Cherokee language, which he carried with him when he was arrested, have since been considered lost .

Works

• 1722: Usu doctrinae juris romani de ignoratia juris in foro germaniae et quod in eo aeqvum sit (Christian Gottlieb Prieber)
• 1734: Christian Gottlieb Priber to Gottsched, Zittau February 23, 1734

literature

• Ariane Barth: He was called Priber , fourteen 10, Leipzig 2012, ISSN  1868-7962
• Ludovick Grant: Historical relation of Facts delivered by Ludovick Grant, Indian Trader, to His Ecellency the Governor of South Carolina. The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 10, pp. 54-68
• Peter Knüvener (Ed.): Priber Sommer Zittau 2016 , Zittauer Geschichtsblätter Heft 53, Verlag Gunter Oettel, Görlitz 2017
• Knox Mellon Jr .: Christian Priber's Cherokee "Kingdom of Paradise" , Georgia Historical Quarterly 57, pp. 319-331, 1973
• Günter Mühlpfordt: Upper Lusatian enlightenment as a pioneer and champion of the bourgeois transformation. On the world effect of a small landscape in the process of “citizenship” . In: Johannes Irmscher et al. (Ed.): Upper Lusatia in the epoch of bourgeois emancipation ; Pp. 3-32 Görlitz, 1981
• Ursula Naumann : Priber's Paradise. A German utopian in the American wilderness . The Other Library, Frankfurt am Main 2001
• Marin Trenk: A lost forerunner of ethnology. The enlightener and social utopian Christian Gottlieb Priber (1697–1745) . Anthropos 103 2008

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Naumann 2001, p. 52
2. ↑ ^{a b} Trenk 2008, p. 216
3. ↑ ^{a b} Barth 2012, p. 18
4. ↑ Trenk 2008, p. 217

Web links

• Literature by and about Christian Gottlieb Prieber in the catalog of the German National Library